comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning's dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow; rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram; that which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk rose; then the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell; then the flower of the vines-it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth; then sweet-brier, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlor or lower chamber window; then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflowers; then the honeysuckles, so that they be somewhat afar off. Of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field-flowers; but those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints; therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

For gardens (speaking of those which are indeed prince-like, as we have done of buildings), the contents ought not well to be under thirty acres of ground, and to be divided into three parts: a green in the entrance, a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres of ground be assigned to the green, six to the heath, four and four to either side, and twelve to the main garden. The green hath two pleasures: the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to inclose the garden; but because the alley will be long, and, in great heat of the year, or day, you ought not to leave the shade in the garden by going in the sun through the green, therefore you are, of either side the green, to plant a covert alley upon carpenter's work, about twelve foot in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden. As for the making of knots or figures with divers colored earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side which the garden stands, they be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts.

LORD BACON, 1561-1624.

GARDENING.

For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more particularly (namely, gardening), were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say, that among many

great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavored to escape from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace in the common paths or circles of life.

The measure of choosing well is, whether a man likes what he has chosen, which, I thank God, has befallen me; and though among the follies of my life building and planting have not been the least, and have cost me more than I have the confidence to own, yet they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years without ever going once to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humor to make so small a re

move.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, 1628-1696.

FLOWERS AND ART.

FROM "JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST."

No portion of creation has been resorted to by mankind with more success for the ornament and decoration of their labors than the vegetable world. The rites, emblems, and mysteries of religion; national achievements, eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of fancy, have been wrought by the hand of the sculptor on the temple, the altar, or the tomb; but plants, their foliage, flowers, or fruits, as the most graceful, varied, and pleasing objects that meet our view, have been more universally the object of design, and have supplied the most beautiful, and perhaps the earliest, embellishments of art. The pomegranate, the almond, and flowers were selected, even in the wilderness by divine appointment, to give form to the sacred utensils; the rewards of merit, the wreath of the victor, were arboraceous. In later periods the acanthus, the ivy, the lotus, the vine, the palm, and the oak flourished under the chisel or in the loom of the artist; and in modern days the vegetable world affords the almost exclusive decorations of ingenuity and art. The cultivation of flowers is, of all the amusements of mankind, the one to be selected and approved as the most innocent in itself, and most perfectly devoid of injury or annoyance to others; the employment is not only conducive to health and peace of mind, but probably more good-will has arisen and friendships been founded by the intercourse and communication connected with this pursuit than from any other whatsoever; the pleasures, the ecstasies of the horticulturist are harmless and pure; a streak, a tint, a shade, becomes his triumph, which, though often obtained by chance, are secured alone by morning care, by evening caution, and

the vigilance of days-an employ which in its various grades excludes neither the opulent nor the indigent, and, teeming with boundless variety, affords an unceasing excitement to emulation, without contempt or ill-will.

J. L KNAPP.

CHINESE GARDENING.

What is it that we seek in the possession of a pleasure-garden? The art of laying out gardens consists in an endeavor to combine cheerfulness of aspect, luxuriance of growth, shade, solitude, and repose in such a manner that the senses may be deluded by an imitation of rural nature. Diversity, which is the main advantage of free landscape, must therefore be sought in a judicious choice of soil, an alternation of chains of hills and valleys, gorges, brooks, and lakes covered with aquatic plants. Symmetry is wearying, and ennui and disgust will soon be excited in a garden where every part betrays constraint and art.

LIET-TSCHEN, an ancient Chinese writer-taken from HUMBOLDT's “Cosmos."

EMPLOYMENT.

If as a flower doth spread and die,

Thou wouldst extend me to some good,
Before I were by frost's extremity,
Nipt in the bud--

The sweetness and the praise were thine;
But the extension and the room

Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine
At thy great doom.

For as thou dost impart thy grace,

The greater shall our glory be;
The measure of our joys is in this place,
The stuff with thee.

Let me not languish then, and send
A life as barren to thy praise

As is the dust, to which that life doth tend,
But with delays.

All things are busy; only I

Neither bring honey with the bees,

Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry

To water these.

I am no link of thy great chain,

But all my company is as a weed:

Lord place me in thy concert-give one strain
To my poor reed.

GEORGE HERBERT, 1593-1632.

THE GARDEN.

When the light flourish of the blue-bird sounds,
And the south wind comes blandly; when the sky
Is soft in delicate blue, with melting pearl
Spotting its bosom, all proclaiming Spring,
Oh with what joy the garden spot we greet,
Wakening from wintry slumbers. As we tread
The branching walks, within its hollow'd nook
We see the violet by some lingering flake
Of melting snow, its sweet eye lifting up,
As welcoming our presence; o'er our heads
The fruit-tree buds are swelling, and we hail

Our grateful task of molding into form

The waste around us. The quick delving spade

Upturns the fresh and odorous earth; the rake
Smooths the plump bed, and in their furrow'd graves
We drop the seed. The robin stops his work
Upon the apple-bough, and flutters down
Stealing, with oft check'd and uplifted foot
And watchful gaze bent quickly either side,

Toward the fall'n wealth of food around the mouth

Of the light paper pouch upon the earth.

But, fearful of our motions, off he flies,

And stoops upon the grub the spade has thrown

Loose from its den beside the wounded root.

Days pass along. The pattering shower falls down

And then the warming sunshine. Tiny clifts

Tell that the seed has turn'd itself, and now

Is pushing up its stem. The verdant pea
Looks out; the twin-leaf'd scallop'd radish shows
Sprinkles of green. The sturdy bean displays
Its jaws distended wide and slightly tongued.

The downy cucumber is seen; the corn

Upshoots its close-wrapp'd spike, and on its mound
The young potato sets its tawny ear.

Meanwhile the fruit-trees gloriously have broke

Into a flush of beauty, and the grape,
Casting aside in peels its shrivel'd skin,
Shows its soft furzy leaf of delicate pink,
And the thick midge-like blossoms round diffuse
A strong, delicious fragrance. Soon along
The trellis stretch the tendrils, sharply prong'd,
Clinging tenacious with their winding rings,
A sheet of bloom
And sending on the stem.

Then decks the garden, till the summer glows,
Forming the perfect fruit. In showery nights
The fire-fly glares with its pendent lamp

Of greenish gold. Each dark nook has a voice,
While perfume floats on every wave of air.
The corn lifts up its bandrols long and slim;
The cucumber has overflow'd its spot
With massy verdure, while the yellow squash
Looks like a trumpet 'mid its giant leaves;
And as we reap the rich fruits of our care,
We bless the God who rains his gifts on us-
Making the earth its treasures rich to yield
With slight and fitful toil. Our hearts should be
Ever bent harps, to send unceasing hymns
Of thankful praise to One who fills all space,

And yet looks down with smiles on lowly man.

ALFRED STREET.

THE GARDENER.

AN OLD SCOTCH BALLAD.

A maiden stude in her bouir door,
As jimp as a willow wand;
When by there came a gardener lad
Wi' a primrose in his hand.

"O ladye, are ye single yet,

Or will ye marry me?

Ye'se get a' the flouirs in my garden,

To be a weed* for thee."

"I love your flouirs," the ladye said,
"But I winna marry thee;

*It is scarcely necessary to observe that weed, in old English, signified garmen. bouir, meant chamber, or apartment; kute, ankle; braune, calf.